Author's note: This story contains a male/male pairing, meaning slash, between Arthur and Eames; consider yourself forewarned. It also includes brief mentions of violence, and a canon character is injured. I think that's all I have to warn for. Really, this is almost embarrassingly fluffy. I am slightly ashamed of myself for writing something this self-indulgently romantic.

Disclaimer: Inception is not mine, will never be mine, and that's kind of the end of it. If anybody attempts to sue me they'll be really disappointed by the dollar-and-something it earns them, I think.

Author's note 2 (for anyone reading who also reads Lares): Yes, I am posting fic that is not Lares. However, yes, I am also still writing Lares. I got awfully writer's blocked for a while, and then promptly rewatched Pitch Black and frantically wrote more. At this point I'm under a third of the way into the next chapter, which looks like it may wind up 30+ pages long. Be patient, my lovely readers. I promise you'll like what I'm planning in the end. :)

And on that note, enjoy.

...

Ariadne knows they will fall in love even before they do.

Oh, she doesn't know right away, of course. It is inconceivable, at first glance. Arthur, calm and composed, with his taste for expensive clothing and gel-slicked hair, is wound up in too tight coils to ever mesh, she thinks at first. Eames, with his poor tailoring and uneven teeth and soft, smiling sarcasm, is too much a force of nature to slow for another person, she thinks. They are parallel lines, running next to each other infinitely, never quite parting but never coming close enough to touch.

It's this mentality that lets her watch Eames kick at Arthur's chair, watch Arthur cross his arms and ooze condescension, and never wonder. The way Eames laughs as a sedated Arthur falls again and again is hardly gentle, she thinks. The way Arthur retorts to each of Eames' suggestions in a tone meant to cut him down is hardly affectionate, she thinks.

And when Arthur kisses her in the dream, knowing she would be willing to allow him deeper for a moment's distraction, and leaves the touch at the merest press of lips, she takes it as proof. See, Arthur doesn't want another person's affection even when he could take it. See, Eames in the body of a blonde keeps walking, his (her) back straight, never minding that Arthur has just kissed a woman in front of him. They do not want, not at all, she thinks, but especially not each other.

She'll look back on that mentality later and laugh.

…

She works a job with Arthur in Barcelona after she graduates, just the two of them. They spend their time in a shared hotel room discussing the dream they're designing, discussing the mark, and when they're tired of seclusion they walk the streets and enjoy the sunlight. Ariadne can't quite talk Arthur into buying a swim suit and going to the beach, any more than she can talk him into sharing the bed platonically rather than watching him wince at knots the couch has put in his back and neck each morning. Arthur is as tightly composed as ever; she knows he is relaxed around her because he rolls up his sleeves when he writes and toys with his dice openly rather than inside his vest pocket.

But:

She suggests bringing Eames onto the job, for the added security a forger can often supply. She is thinking of Eames as the shape-shifting safety net of brilliant ideas and crooked smiles she remembers him being during the Fischer job, not as a human being with a physical presence somewhere on the globe and all the obligations that go along with that.

Arthur, though, shakes his head. "He's in London for his sister's wedding," Arthur says.

Ariadne is too busy processing Eames as having a sister, let alone having a sister he cares about enough to see married, to realize precisely what Arthur has said. It isn't only that he knows where Eames is; he knows in such a casual sense, as if of course he would be aware of the forger's whereabouts, that it doesn't even strike him as odd that he can give Eames' precise location and yet cannot remember exactly where Cobb and his children have recently moved to.

…

She and Eames wind up spectacularly drunk after a successful job, alone in a hotel suite exhausting a mini-bar which is being paid for by the credit card of a man who doesn't exist. Their extractor for this job has already fucked off, collecting his belongings from the room and disappearing as soon as the job ends, but Ariadne and Eames remain, toasting each other with pathetic hotel vodka, half-drunk on the giddiness of success even before the alcohol kicks in.

They are too drunk, then, to care that alcohol and somnacin do not always mix well. Eames, Ariadne has learned, owns a PASIV of his own, which he stole from the British military—she thinks SAS, but isn't sure and has never asked—shortly before his own desertion of that same establishment. Since he supplied the PASIV for this job, and it is sitting out on the couch, somehow it becomes a good idea to connect themselves to the machine and slip under, Ariadne's head lolling onto Eames' shoulder where they're slumped at the foot of the couch.

Underneath, Eames dreams up a room of mirrors, and Ariadne amuses herself for a minute by improving it, shifting angles and refracting light until they are no longer in a room but a maze of mirrors, their reflections coming back to them from almost infinite directions. Eames' subconscious, muzzled by the alcohol, is too far gone to even summon projections; she is later thankful for exactly how stable of a dreamer Eames is, because most dreamers past that point would have their dreams collapse into limbo entirely.

When Ariadne is done warping the architecture of their world, Eames takes his turn, stepping up to the mirrors and making absurd faces. Ariadne giggles like the drunk she is, watching him contort his face comically, forging his features into more and more ridiculous combinations. He does a Picasso, then, his eyes in entirely the wrong places and his mouth twisted in a way that must be uncomfortable. Then, evidently bored of restricting his efforts just to his face, Eames starts putting on people.

He does his blonde, first, then goes through a string of bodies he uses regularly, male and female, old and young, blonde and brunette and black haired and red haired, ugly and beautiful. Ariadne laughs at each of them, and laughs harder when he puts on their voices and mannerisms too. She discusses shoes with Eames' blonde from the Fischer job for nearly twenty minutes, and is continually amused by the fact that Eames apparently knows infinitely more about brand names and couture than she ever will.

"Give me a request!" he says, shifting back into his own form and leaning against a mirror, rubbing his thumb over his mouth in a gesture that is entirely Eames.

He does presidents for her, and famous actors and actresses, and then characters from literature when she runs out of pop culture ammunition. Ariadne thinks the drunken slur of his voice even compliments some of the over the top Shakespeare she requests from him. She fulfills her adolescent dream of having a snog with Brad Pitt, and when Eames has leaned away, wiping his lips with the back of his hand and laughing, she says, "Try Arthur."

Eames laughs, hiccups once, and then goes solemn in the sort of way that only drunks can ever quite manage. "Can't," he says, pressing his body weight against one of the mirrors like he can't trust himself to stand.

"Why not?" Ariadne asks. She thinks she frowns.

He beckons her closer with a crook of his fingers, and she lurches to lean on the wall beside him. With the air of one with a great secret, Eames leans in and whispers, "He's a stick in the mud, that's why." Ariadne laughs like that's somehow funny, and almost misses Eames shaking his head. "No, Ari, you don't understand," Eames says, looking frustrated. "He's—Arthur is—," and words fail Eames, she can see it happen. He sighs. "I can't even believe he exists, some of the time," Eames confesses, voice very soft.

She remembers this the next day, through the hangover and the blur that mixing vodka and sleep compounds inevitably causes. She doesn't remember everything that comes after, the part where they slumped to the floor and discussed people they'd worked with like gossiping teenaged girls, but she does remember the split second where the ever-vocal Eames had lacked the words to describe their point man and friend.

…

"Arthur, you could simply never appreciate the art of it all," she hears Eames say, on a job they're all working together.

She stands with the warehouse door slotted every so gently open, standing behind it for reasons she can't explain. Ariadne doesn't have a real reason not to walk into the warehouse, and in fact has plenty of reasons to: her model isn't done yet, she wants to leave work early tonight and so should get everything finished now, the coffee in her hands is probably getting cold. Despite that she remains still and silent behind a partially opened door, almost holding her breath, feeling as though she's intruding.

"Oh?" Arthur asks, low voice all mocking sincerity, and she can picture what he looks like at this moment, his shirt sleeves unrolled and the top button of his neatly pressed shirt undone. She thinks he will have tipped his chair back on two legs when Eames started speaking, like he never quite outgrew grade school habits where Eames is concerned. Maybe Arthur raises one dark brow, gesture striking against his pale skin, just to rub his tone in.

Eames, she thinks, will lean in ever so slightly in return. He is probably standing with his back turned to his desk, his large hands braced back against the tabletop, his head turned down to meet Arthur's gaze—he probably thinks he looks detached, but Ariadne is starting to learn better, is starting to realize that when Arthur speaks something in Eames always comes to attention. Maybe it's a remnant of Eames' military days, or maybe it's something that only Arthur has ever evoked, Ariadne can't pretend to know. The fact remains that Eames will always focus more of his attention on Arthur than he plans to, and Arthur will never notice. "The reason you're a terrible forger," Eames says, and the curious thing is that he doesn't sound as though he's trying to start an argument, "is because you're always thinking like an architect. That's Cobb's influence, I suppose, and the greater pity that he got to you first. You're always trying to build people in details, like skin tone or eye color or the press of their clothing, but that isn't it at all."

"You're saying forging works more by feel than fact?" Arthur asks, and Ariadne hears the scrape of metal on tile that tells her Arthur has dropped his chair back onto four legs. He probably presses one bare elbow into the armrest of the chair, relaxing his chin ever so slightly into the cradle of his fingertips, looking up at Eames with genuine interest now.

Eames, she thinks, will half nod, that thin trace of a smile curving his lips the way it always does when they are beginning to catch on. "Forging is entirely about how people make you feel, and how you feel about people," Eames informs Arthur, "and nothing to do with accuracy, at least on a very basic level. Details like using the right posture or accent help to make a forgery more believable, help to make it ring true, but unless the feel of a person is there, none of that will matter." She can see Eames smirking, in her mind's eye, though she thinks it may be in her imagination only that there's something rueful in that smirk. "And that, Arthur, is why you will never make a good forger."

Arthur's voice is as steady as ever, and even a bit cold, when he says, "I know how people make me feel, Mr. Eames."

Ariadne pictures Eames shrugging at this, his broad shoulders relaxed with his usual confidence. "Pet," Eames says, and now Ariadne knows he is trying to start a fight, because that endearment only makes an appearance when Eames feels Arthur has missed something obvious and is lashing out in retaliation, "did I ever say you didn't?"

Slowly, Ariadne steps away from the door.

…

A job goes very wrong, and Ariadne kneels in a raining street, panting, eyes blurring with tears, and tries to call an ambulance in a language she barely speaks and apply pressure to the bleeding wound in Arthur's side at the same time. She fumbles hanging up the phone and simply lets it drop, bouncing off the soaked fabric covering her knee and skittering along the road before coming to a stop. Arthur coughs, a painful noise, and blood propels itself past his lips.

He tries to help her, but his pupils are too wide by half and his eyes are unfocused, and his hands slip slightly on the wet clinging fabric of his shirt. She tries to ignore the hole in Arthur's side, and wants to laugh when the only thing he says, weakly, is, "I think I've been shot."

When the ambulance arrives, they do not let her in it. She walks alongside the stretcher for the few steps between the street and the ambulance anyway, whispering reassurances she mostly wishes would work on herself, telling Arthur he'll be alright, everything will be fine. Somehow, and she doesn't know how, he gets his cellphone into his hand; he catches her wrist and presses it into her grip before he is swept along. The last word he says to her before the ambulance doors close is, "Eames."

Ariadne hails a cab, climbs dripping wet and shaking into its backseat, and gives the driver the address of the hospital. Then, with trembling fingers, she scrolls through an address book and goes about making a call.

…

Eames and Arthur talk quietly, Arthur tired and pale in the hospital bed, looking more vulnerable than Ariadne ever expected to see him. She hovers outside the room, not so much exiled as unable to spend another minute in the white space, biting her nails and fretting herself stupid even though she's been assured now, both by doctors and Arthur himself, that everything is going to be alright.

It's long after visiting hours, but a little bribery goes a long way, and once Eames arrived with charm on full there was no question of their being asked to leave. The first two days, with Ariadne huddled in a waiting room chair and Arthur in surgery and later recovery, were horrid; Ariadne couldn't get in to see Arthur at all until Eames arrived, just off a plane and looking just as exhausted as Ariadne, and proceeded to teach her the proper way to break the rules of a foreign hospital.

Arthur should be sleeping but can't, Ariadne knows, not entirely trusting of medicine given by strangers after how wrong their job went, and too uncomfortable to sleep in a place as unprotected as a hospital. Eames and Ariadne have been taking turns entertaining him—really, neither of them have been getting much in the way of sleep for the past week either, and everyone involved will only be glad when Arthur is released in two weeks.

Now is Eames' turn with Arthur. Ariadne can't see what they're saying, her lip reading skills never having been that good, but she can see the softness of Eames' expression, the unexpected gentleness to his eyes that she's never quite seen before. Arthur, in turn, is smiling gently, despite the stutters of pain that cross his face, and even smirks a little from time to time, which reassures Ariadne far, far more than it should.

Neither of them have told Arthur about the first day they spent in his room, when Arthur slept on and on and they were both half afraid he would never wake up. Eames sat in the uncomfortable chair by Arthur's bedside that he's inhabiting now and held the point man's hand as he slept, because in pained sleep, with his hair in disarray and his usual tailored clothes exchanged for a hospital gown, Arthur had looked young and uncharacteristically fragile. Ariadne herself had stroked Arthur's hair away from his forehead on his other side, whispering to Eames over Arthur's prone form, but it hadn't been the same, not at all. Ariadne remembers when she thought Eames would not slow for anyone, and then tries to reconcile that in her mind with the image of the forger's fingers tangled almost too tightly around the point man's smaller hand. She would laugh at herself, now, if she had the energy or inclination to laugh after the past few days.

Neither of them have told Arthur about that. Ariadne looks at Arthur now, smiling gently in the darkened hospital room, speaking softly with Eames to avoid sleep, and isn't sure anyone has to.

…

They work a job, all three of them together, and it is calm and coordinated and goes perfectly according to plan, for once. The planning of it is easy, even, relaxed, as though somehow they all know ahead of time that this one job will be absolutely flawless; Ariadne thinks back on this as a working vacation, even if it makes her wonder about how frantic her life is, that a single simple job seems like such a break.

Eames brings Arthur breakfast, most mornings—a muffin from a bakery just around the corner, never the same type as the day before, and Ariadne realizes while that this means that while Eames does not know Arthur's preference in breakfast foods, he at least cares enough to learn. Arthur and Eames dip into levels of dreams together as practice, with Ariadne observing, and actually, Eames confesses to her one morning over coffee, manage to keep their banter civil and their conversation flowing while ensuring the job goes according to plan. Eames wears clothing that is slightly less visually offensive than his usual, and Arthur takes to unrolling his sleeves and loosening his tie more often, wearing his preferred vests often and proper suits almost never. One day Eames comes to work actually wearing a tie, which Arthur stares at briefly, declares a disaster, and then carefully reknots in the middle of the warehouse, Eames' breath against his neck as Arthur stands close for the task. They don't quite fit, not yet—they smile at each other's backs and never quite catch each other wanting to reach out—but Ariadne knows they will.

…

Ariadne used to think they would never act on whatever she noticed laying between them. Arthur, too self-contained, and Eames, too brash, hardly seemed a good match. They complemented each other with the rigidity of their angles, but were too sharp, too misaligned, for the friction between them to ever do anything but push each other away. She looked to them and saw parallel lines, forgetting that if the horizon is far enough away, and an observer is willing to wait a while, even parallel lines can seem to touch.

She watches them brush together, angles sliding into place cautiously, and waits for the final, momentous shift that will bring them together, those same sharp lines she saw before now ensuring that they'll never slide apart. It might take some time, but that's alright. Ariadne has watched them from almost the beginning, curious at first and later anticipating. She can wait a little longer.

They come out of that job's dream together, and Ariadne can see Arthur nearly reach across the small distance between them to touch Eames, can see Eames nearly stand to drag Arthur up with him, and thinks, not yet.

But soon.